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PANAMA CANAL FOR FOREIGN SHIPS

By

AGNES C. LAUT

Have we been so proud in the successful digging of the Panama Canal that we have become content to have it stand merely as an engineering triumph? Is the Canal to serve us, who are paying for it, only as a national monument to our engineering skill and administrative efficiency, or is it now to be more valued as it serves the purpose for which it was undertaken the lowering of rates of carriage of supplies to every consumer?

Miss Laut's article will be of deepest interest and concern to every one who desires to look forward to the opening of the Canal as something more than a day of engineering victory.—Editor's Note.

ILL the opening of the Panama Canal produce the tremendous reduction in rates confidently expected by the cities of the South and West for the past four years? Literally, from Portland to Pensacola, millions-it would be safe to say hundreds of millions-have been spent on harbor improvements, dock facilities and belt-line civic railroads, solely in anticipation of the great traffic expected to result from the opening of the Canal.

Water rates are cheaper than rail rates, even on the most expensive basis as to water, namely, as 1 is to 2; on a cheap basis as to water, such as barge work, or on the Great Lakes, water rates are cheaper than rail, namely, as 1 is to 7. That being the case and Panama giving access from Atlantic to Pacific by water, why will freight not travel almost solely by water? You can ship a ton of groceries from Antwerp to Los Angeles for the same rate as from Los Angeles by rail to San Francisco; and the voyage round the Horn is 8,000 to 10,000 miles longer than Panama will be. Why, then, will not freights be revolutionized?

Take a look at this whole proposition of water vs. rail.

S. A. Thompson, Secretary of the Rivers and Harbors Congress, proves that $1 will carry a ton of freight 127 miles on a railroad, 1,250 miles on the Great Lakes, or 2,000 miles by barge on a river.

Improvements in navigation on the Great Lakes have reduced the freight rate on ore from $80 a ton seventy years ago, to $7.50, thirty years ago, to 25 cents a ton from Duluth to Buffalo today this on the authority of Mr. Harvey Goulder, the attorney for many of the Great Lakes Transportation Companies. Wheat by rail from Duluth, or Ft. William, to Buffalo, runs from 12 cents up; by water, from 5 cents and 42 cents down as low as 12 cents a hundred, in years when cargoes were scarce.

To ship oranges from Los Angeles to New York by rail costs $1 a box in freight. To ship apples from Washington to New York by rail costs 50 cents in freight. By water, the oranges can be shipped for 40 cents a box, the apples for 20 cents. When a rate war occurred, 1910-11, among the various coastal lines from the Pacific to the Atlantic, now breaking their freight in bulk and shipping it across the railroad at Panama, or the Mexican road at Tehauntepec, rates fell as low as $3 a ton for freights of fruit, lumber, and salt. It is said these low rates caused the ruin of one company-the California-Atlantic — but the fact remains that the president of the ruined company has testified that he could carry freight at from $7.50 to $10 a ton from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic, and make a good profit. If you average up all the rail rates from Atlantic to Pacific, they come to $20 a ton.

Or take the rates on lumber from Pacific to Atlantic. If you go to build

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a house in New England, Pennsylvania, or New York, you will find you can get very little lumber under $48, $60 or even $75 per thousand. I made that statement not long ago in a magazine; and it was challenged by the Retail Lumber Trust. Within one month after the challenge, I was able to post the Trust a bill for $75 per thousand. This very lumber, either in northeastern Texas, or on the Pacific Coast, costs only $20 to $25 per thousand. What doubles and trebles the price? Look at rates!

The rates on lumber from Coast to Coast runs from $16 to $20 per thousand. Ship it across the Isthmus of Panama, even with transshipment at both ends of the railroad, or across Tehauntepec, with cost of double handling at each end of the railroad, and the rate on the same lumber is $10 to $15 per thousand. When the Canal opens and there is no double handling on the railroad, the rate is to be as low as $8 per thousand for regular steamers and $5 per thousand for "tramps".

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STEAMERS AT SAN PEDRO

dealer in lumber in Virginia told me that it costs 12 cents to 15 cents a hundred, including handling at both ends, to ship

lumber 3,500 miles by water to European points. To bring that lumber the same distance across the continent from Washington costs 85 cents. By Panama, the lumber from the Pacific could be brought to the Atlantic for 20 cents; 16 cents more would ship it back to Mississippi points-subtract that from 85 cents, the cost of transportation by rail, and see what you save in freight rates.

Or take a southern gulf port as an example of water vs. rail: Steel, that it costs $3 a ton to bring by rail to tidewater from the Birmingham district, costs 75 cents by barge. Coal costs by rail $1, by barge, 24 cents, to Pensacola. If you take the rates down the Mississippi, water vs. rail, they are even more striking. Coal shows a reduction of from $1.50 to 25 cents and 45 cents a

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ton.

How about wheat, the great staple of the Northwest and Middle-West? From Alberta to the Pacific is 600 miles: to the Atlantic 2,400 miles. The same of Montana and Washington! Rates being

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LOOKING UP THE PORTLAND CANAL TOWARDS STEWART, BRITISH COLUMBIA

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STEAMER LOADING LUMBER AND GRAIN SHIP IN MIDSTREAM, PORTLAND HARBOR

proportionate, it should be cheaper-it isn't to ship by the Pacific than by the Atlantic, namely, as 1 is to 4. The same of Kansas and southern ports! From Kansas to Houston is 700 miles plus; to New York is 1,300 miles plus. Rates being equitable-which they aren't-it should be cheaper for Kansas to ship by the Gulf than by the Atlantic, namely, as 1 is to 2.

All this, please note, is purely theoretical. On the basis of what ought to be but what isn't, cities, from Seattle to Savannah, from Portland to Pensacola, have spent money like water to bring freight down to ocean front instead of

letting it go across the continent. Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, Houston, and Los Angeles have all put in municipal dock systems insuring the same treatment to railways and ocean liners; municipal belt-line railroads to forward and switch freight, so that railroads cannot discriminate against steamships, other than their own, by extra charges concealed in "switching" bills.

San Francisco is spending nine millions on her harbor. Portland has instituted municipal stevedoring and also runs a line of river boats up the Columbia to connect the Great Inland Empire for 400 miles by water with ocean front.

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